Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume Ten

Bussel (The Big Book of Quickies) serves up an eclectic bundle of 21 spicy shorts. An older woman discovers newfound sensuality in Garnell Wallace’s sensitive “Sunlight and Santino,” while Eireann Shells delivers an edgy BDSM scene in “The Afterlife with Red and White.” April Would explores the pleasures of exhibitionism in “The Alligator Jaw,” about encounters in an adult cinema, as does Rebecca Chase in “Stand Strong, Look Sexy,” which follows burlesque performers. Several stories leave the realm of reality all together, including Roberta Kelley’s sapphic vampire tale “Sometimes Lies Become Her” and Brynne Blackmoore’s “Steamy ’Squatch Watch,” in which things heat up at a meeting of the Gatlinburg Sasquatch Society. In Melanie Anton’s “Hawthorne’s Ghost” a graduate student obsessed with Nathaniel Hawthorne has a paranormal encounter with the man himself. Bussel never fails to bring together a diverse and titillating collection of bite-size erotica, and this is no exception. Though not every piece will work for every reader, there’s something here to please any erotica fan. (Dec.)